Government Shut Down

The Democrats didn’t do their budget last year when they were supposed to because it was an election year. It was their strategy from the beginning of last year.

Last week Jonathan Allen at Politico reported that the Democrats in Congress might not pass a budget resolution this year. “Indeed, some Democratic insiders suspect that leaders will skip the budget process altogether this year — a way to avoid the political unpleasantness of voting on spending, deficits and taxes in an election year — or simply go through a few of the motions, without any real effort to complete the work,” Allen wrote. “If the House does not pass a first version of the budget resolution, it will be the first time since the implementation of the 1974 Budget Act, which governs the modern congressional budgeting process.”

The president will instruct his party to demagogue the House Republican budget, labeling it as an assault on the poor and a windfall for the rich that will rip America’s social safety net to shreds.
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The White House doesn’t care—it perceives a political path to victory in 2012. What makes this strategy doubly reckless and cynical is that the administration knows a debt crisis is coming and that its spending plans cannot continue.

But the Obama administration’s adults—Chief of Staff Bill Daley, Office of Management and Budget Director Jack Lew, and National Economic Council Director Gene Sperling—are clearly not in charge. The politicos—Senior Adviser David Plouffe (who managed Mr. Obama’s 2008 campaign) and Communications Director Daniel Pfeiffer (who had the same title in the 2008 campaign) have their hands on the wheel. The White House is in full re-election mode.

All the while, Obama chides that the budget agreement “could have gotten done three months ago.” Why not 6 months ago, Barack? You know, when it was supposed to have been done? Obama counts on an uninformed electorate.

The Washington air is filled with “frank and constructive” discussions, as President Obama described the. “No one wants a shutdown,” said House Speaker John Boehner. “We’ve narrowed the issues significantly,” said Crypt Keeper Harry Reid.

And yet, we’re still on schedule for doomsday on Friday night. A White House source told CNN that despite all the encouraging public statements, “there was almost no progress made” last night.